


Pointillism

by JackyM



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Episode Style, M/M, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 15:16:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18574105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackyM/pseuds/JackyM
Summary: There's a few new art exhibits at the Night Vale Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Otherworldly Being Consultant Methodologies, and a look at traffic and some Community Health Tips.





	Pointillism

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to do an episode style fic with some bonus Cecilos content, and this was a really good idea that I decided to go with! nwn
> 
> His text tone is the Mario Paint meow because Janice put it in as a joke but Cecil thought it was so cute he kept it!

When one door opens, a cold trench opens up in your kitchen’s linoleum floor. It begins to hum. And lately, the humming has been louder, and pit has been getting colder. 

Welcome to Night Vale. 

Exciting news, Night Vale! The Night Vale Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Otherworldly Being Consultant Methodologies has announced its newest art exhibit additions! 

You may not know this about me, listeners, but I just love art. I’ve recently gotten more into charcoal sketching, something I have not done in some time. I did a few still-lifes for things around my house. Just ordinary things, like the view of the street from the bedroom window, the washing machine, the six-lipped daffodils on the kitchen table. I’m trying to steadily get used to charcoal sketching, since I think that it would be nice to surprise a certain someone with a charcoal sketch of his lab for his birthday. Oh, listeners, he has  _ no idea _ . I cannot wait until he finds out that all this time, I have been practicing charcoal sketching for a birthday present that is going to be a complete surprise!

The first new exhibit is a bloodstone circle that has a modern twist to it. Instead of using bloodstones and candles, the bloodstones have been hollowed out and small lights have been placed inside of them! The bloodstones now light themselves up, and better yet, provide a rich sanguine glow to the bloodstone circle that they are used in. There’s also a new fountain in the museum’s food court, pumping a dark green viscous substance out of the mouth, ears, nose, and eyes of a being with several contorted faces. 

“If you toss a coin into the fountain, I strongly advise that you do not make a wish,” said Ricardo Marino, associate curator at the museum, “or, like, do make a wish. Whatever. I dunno, people are always tossing coins into fountains. Why? It’s not like anyone really gets wishes granted after the Great Wish Depression in 1519. Nobody really bothers trying to get wishes anymore. A couple of cents for a wish is a pipe dream. And like, half the time you throw a coin into a fountain, you just completely forget about how you threw it in the fountain like a day later. And that’s like, rule number one with wishes completely ignored. So why waste a coin on a wish you know for a fact is never going to come true because you’re not even following the protocol for proper wish requests? Also, you like, always see fountains full of coins. Why? And what happens to those coins, anyways? Do they just stay in there until someone gets tired of looking at wasted money in a pool of water?”

Marino then shrugged, arching all four of his shoulders and turning his head at a one-hundred and eight degree angle, his eyes wide and concerned, but also incredibly forlorn. 

One last addition to the museum is an exhibit with...oh. It’s...hmm. It’s, ah, an exhibit with some mirrors, listeners. Just an exhibit with a lot of mirrors. A room of a bunch of parallel mirrors facing one another and creating a series of smaller reflections that recede into infinity. They’re called infinity mirrors, and they’re supposed to show the artistic capabilities of reflection all by itself. I can’t say that this is an exhibit I’m excited to see, but I am sure that...someone might enjoy this. Someone without any personal issues with mirrors, mirrors that flicker with the figments of another version of yourself, right in the corner of your eye, and--

No.

Haha, no...

You know what? I’m, um, not going to think too much about this final exhibit, and move on to something else. I am assuming this is alright with all of you, because right now I am giving myself a thumbs-up with one hand and an okay symbol with the other.

Let’s take a look at traffic!

It ran beside you as you stare out the window. Your eyelids slackened, and focused on nothing but its movement. Four long legs, constantly moving spindly joints. You could never see its face, but you knew it had one, because when the window was open on warm summer nights, you could have sworn you could hear its heavy panting among its soft, sturdy footfalls. It always followed you when you were sitting in the back of your family car all those years ago. No matter where you were, you saw it eventually. 

Sometimes it pounced out from the sagebrush, landing in the fine sand near the side of the road and quickly gaining speed on your car. 

Sometimes it just appeared behind the car, though the last time you checked, there was nothing behind you but the empty desert highway. And oh, how often you checked when you did not see it. 

You had gotten so used to its company on long drives through the night. Seeing it running steadily beside the car offered a distraction and a source of wonder. Distraction because the fluid movement of its legs and tail were enrapturing, and watching it was rhythmic. Wonder because you could never understand how it could run so quickly, and for so long. You saw it less and less, the more time you spent in the front seat, and even less when you started driving. When it became you driving a car down a desert highway in the dead of night, you had stopped seeing it completely. You have not seen it in years. You wish sometimes that you could. Just to feel that familiarity, that strange companionship, that subtle sense of terror overpowered by how mystified you were by its presence. 

This has been traffic.

An update on the new art exhibits, listeners! Just one exhibit, actually. It’s on the exhibit with the...the mirrors. As of its opening, it has attracted a lot of attention. Marino said that this exhibit must be the most engaging exhibit there’s ever been at the museum, given how many people have gone into the room full of parallel mirrors and have not left yet. People are going to the exhibit and staring into the mirrors and just...standing there. Their entire bodies grow stiff, as though all particle movement in their body ceased in that very moment. Their eyes are locked on their reflection in the mirrors, stretching out in infinite repetition. Right now, there’s nearly sixty people in the new exhibit, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and staring into a tunnel of themselves.

_ [Mario Paint meow] _

Oh! Hmm…

One moment, listeners, I just received a few texts from Carlos, and far be it from me to read personal texts, out loud, on my professional radio show. Here’s a quick, pre-recorded word from our sponsors.

Do you love fresh food, listeners?

Do you love it when food is so fresh that its freshness envelops your sense of taste like a thick fog? Do you love it when the effluxes of calcium and gaseous buildup causing your freshly killed meat to to twitch and tremble inside of your mouth? Do you love to feel something that was alive mere minutes ago slide down your throat, still carrying vestiges of its life?

What about peanuts? 

Do you love peanuts?

Do you love peanuts being thrown at you?

Do you love peanuts being shot at you from really small cannons?

Do you love peanuts suddenly appearing in front of you, and appearing in front of you no matter where you look, endlessly multiplying as they pile on top of the table you’re seated at, beckoning you to eat them even though you feel lukewarm towards peanuts at best? 

Do you love the idea of something living crawling into your mouth, struggling to move itself between your lips and teeth, its legs around your tongue as it desperately tries to seek refuge in your stomach where it can be digested, the one and only thing that it wants in its life? Do you love the idea of becoming the fatal home of this fresh, fresh food? Do you love the idea of becoming swaddled in piles and piles of peanuts, sinking your teeth into something and feeling its life slip out of its nerves and into your body?

Of course you do.

Everyone loves fresh food.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Always fresh. Never frozen. Always living. Always peanuts. 

Okay, texts read, listeners. Carlos told me he is going to go investigate the new exhibit at the art museum. Art, he says, is an incredibly important kind of of science, which means that as a scientist, it is vital that he observe the many kinds of art that artists produce. Art is just full of science, like the interaction of a variety of different chemical compounds that produce a particular kind of paint or texture, and the creative use of different wavelengths of light within the electromagnetic spectrum that appear as a variety of different colors. Oh, and, it also kind of concerning that people are just walking into the exhibit and staring at the mirrors and not doing anything else. Scientifically speaking, staring at things for a long period of time, no matter how weird and fake that time is, is statistically indicative of some kind of danger. Carlos said he’d probably take a look at that, but he’s really interested in the light-up bloodstones and in the type of sludge produced by the fountain. He’ll stop by the mirror exhibit if he has time. 

Ordinarily, listeners, I would worry about Carlos’ safety, but...I know, from personal experience, that Carlos is not bothered by mirrors. Even at their most horrifying, when they flicker, Carlos is not afraid of them, and can protect himself and others from them. I know Carlos will be alright. I know he will. 

More on this story as it develops. Though, listeners, and I say this in the most professional way a journalist can...I certainly hope that it will not. At least, I hope it will not develop in a way that is dangerous. 

Now, Community Health Tips. 

According to the Night Vale Public Health Fund, there’s a variety of different lunches you can pack that will give you incredible nutritional benefit! The NVPHF suggests packing a lunch with a meat product, a vegetable product, something seasoned with Goliath birdeater venom, a few loose granite stones, and some kind of calcium-rich food. One such healthy lunch is braised lamb ribs on homemade bread with a shale dust garnish and grasshopper leg chutney! Just wake up about three hours before you need to get ready for work at six the morning of, and place your lamb in a baking dish with easily accessible seasoning ingredients like garlic, white wine, soy sauce, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon, olive oil, salt, and pepper! Getting organic, GMO-free ingredients is key for having a healthy lunch, so make sure you spend additional money on high-quality ingredients. Roast the lamb in the oven for about an hour and ten minutes, and when it’s done, place a few of the ribs on the homemade bread that you made the night before right after you got home from work at six in the evening. 

And just like that, you have a simple, healthy meal ready for you at lunch! It’s so much cheaper and better for you than the virtually harmless pre-packaged food that’s non-organic and full of nasty things like GMOs that will almost definitely give you tetanus. Not only will you be eating an incredibly healthy meal, but you will also be able to show everyone in your overworked and underpaid working environment that you shirk things like leisure and other enjoyable things that you get in your little time off from a time-intensive job in order to cook food at home. You will be the absolute pinnacle of a hard-working person who doesn’t lazily depend on a hastily made turkey and lettuce sandwich, which is far more accessible and gels easier with their working schedule. 

This just in, listeners. The new mirror exhibit has produced the highest influx of visitors to the art museum in several decades. Concerned friends and family are coming to the art museum looking for a loved one who was supposed to come home an hour or so ago, and they too are getting completely lost in what can only be the subjective beauty of a mirror reflecting an image over and over again, a reminder of how a singular existence is far from singular. 

_ [Mario Paint meow] _

Hmm?

Oh, oh…

Listeners, Carlos just texted me. He added an emoji of a dinosaur and an exclamation point and a really large and detailed dragonfly leg, which means that his text is incredibly urgent. He said that while he was trying to get a pH reading from the fountain, looking at the slow-moving green fluid and rubbing his chin and saying “hmm”, his danger meter started suddenly making a variety of loud, cacophonous noises. He also wanted me to tell you all that it does not sound like a nest of birds, but rather, like a nest of crocodiles that are screaming. The noises are incredibly different, based on their average decibel output and also based on how alarming screaming crocodiles really are. 

Oh, and also, his danger meter is picking up on average, seventeen more Standard Fatality Units than is normal for Night Vale, and statistically speaking, based on statistical averages, that is a cause for concern. And a cause for concern means that it needs to be investigated, in order to keep people from getting harmed by something that can be understood and mitigated with science. He said he’s going to go and investigate the mirrors, and I’m sure he’ll be fine, but...but what if he’s not? What if this increase in danger is so much larger that even someone who’s fine with mirrors normally won’t be fine here? I mean, isn’t everyone else currently standing in that room full of mirrors, transfixed, normally capable of looking in a mirror? 

Listeners, I need...I need to make sure that Carlos will be alright. To help him, if I can. While I do that, I take you, dear listeners, to the few of you who remain here and not gazing longingly into an endlessly repeating mirror showing multitudes of your very self...the Weather. 

* * *

We’re back, listeners.

We’re back. 

All of us. 

When I got to the museum, I could not find Carlos. He said that he was near the fountain, running a variety of tests on the steadily increasing Standard Fatality Units that he was observing. But the only way to get to the fountain was through the new...mirror exhibit. The exhibit now full of people pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, staring, unblinking, into a repeating reflection of themselves. I tried to work my way past the crowd of people, and tried to keep my eyes on something other than the reflective surfaces everywhere. But they were everywhere. On the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor. I tried to focus on the surfaces that were not reflective, that were not flickering, that were not infinitely repeating an image I did not want to see. 

But an exhibit that is made of mirrors would not be an effective exhibit if you were not forced to behold your reflection at one point or another. And often, while we are focusing on trying to not pay attention to something, that something becomes the thing we inevitably give our attention to because we made ourselves so engrossed with not paying attention to it. So without meaning to, I let my eyes drift to one of the mirrors on the ceiling. Once I did, I understood what had caused so many people to become hopelessly engaged with the mirrors. 

I saw my reflection, but I saw other reflections of myself. 

Reflections of myself that were radically different in some ways, and almost identical in others. Reflections of myself that were worse, that were better, that were the same. All of them looking back at me with the same shocked expression. All of them equally surprised at just how infinite and replaceable one existence is. All of them a reminder that the uniqueness of a person is only as unique as the universe in which they inhabit. And, listeners...I felt, in that moment, just how infinite that universe truly was. Looking into the faces of not just one, but multiple, ever-expanding versions of my own self, I began to wonder just how replaceable that one self truly was. 

I thought about this. 

I thought about this over years and years. 

Years of experiences and relationships, experiences and relationships these other reflections had in varying degrees of similarity. Degrees of similarity. Almost identical, but not quite. The same face, the same indescribably unique voice, the same genetic basis, but not the same person. 

I think it was then I heard the first few mirrors shatter. 

It was a moment later when I saw the mirror above my shatter, hit by something sturdy and uneven. I blinked, quickly pulled from a thick mire of thought and introspection, the type of thought and introspection that the consciousness invites the interruption of. I heard the glass shatter, I heard Carlos, I heard the confused exclamations from the milling people around me in the new art exhibit. 

I felt Carlos’ hand reach for mine, gently. He shook it a few times, even more gently than he’d taken it. I looked at him. He looked at me, those handsome brown eyes so concerned, that beautiful black hair reflected in fractals in the broken mirrors. Divided, rigidly, by cracks, but still a part of a composite whole. It had been a long time since I’d seen a broken mirror. A long time since I had looked in a broken mirror. Even longer since I’d seen a reflection that flickered. And it would be longer still until I truly felt comfortable looking into a mirror. 

It took me a few moments to register what he even said. 

“Cecil?” 

I looked at him and blinked.

“Carlos?”

“Are you alright? My danger meter readings indicated that the mirrors used here are the kind that give reflections of you in another universe. However, that did not explain the constant increase in Standard Fatality Units. I thought about it a lot, and said, ‘hmm’ and rubbed my chin while writing down a lot of complicated equations with letters in them, and that was when I realized that the mirrors facing one another and creating a series of smaller and smaller reflections was increasing the danger of this exhibit as it was producing more and more reflections of alternate realities! I...I wanted to perform experiments on this exhibit, but the ever-increasing danger of it made it unsafe. And Cecil, unsafe science is not good science. Unsafe science is dangerous, and can lead to death. And dead scientists really do not get much science done. Spectral hands are very bad at holding test tubes full of a bubbling fluid. Oh, I asked you if you were alright, too, Ceece. That is also a very important point that I need to make along with my discovery, which is to say, I am concerned about your wellbeing.”

“I’m fine,” I said, squeezing his hand back, “better, now that you’re here. And better, now that you’ve saved everyone.”

“I just did what a scientist should do, Cecil. Throwing rocks at mirrors to keep people safe is just one thing scientists should do. Spinning in swivel chairs and sticking gloved hands in pools of acidic water to retrieve a transplant study tube of sowbugs are two other things scientists should do. I...did not look in the mirrors, Cecil. But I saw that you did. Are you sure you’re alright? As soon as I saw you I knew that the only thing I could do was to break them...once something becomes so dangerous it can harm people you really love, Cecil, it does not matter if it is a work of art demonstrating the extremely exciting scientific property of reflection. It needs to be stopped.”

“I am sure. And I did look into them, Carlos, and...and you were right, about what they can do. I was worried about them to begin with. But I was also worried about you. I had to make sure you were okay, Carlos, I...I couldn’t just wait and see.”

“Cecil,” he said, smiling, and holding my hands with both of this, “I’m a scientist. A scientist is always fine.”

“I know. You’re right. I think by extension, a scientist’s husband is always fine, too. Scientists and their husbands are always fine.”

“Yes! Scientists and their very brave and considerate and caring husbands are always fine.”

Carlos drove me back to the station after that. 

He’s in the waiting room now. I think I am going to go home after today’s show, and focus on my charcoal sketches. I need something...to take my mind off of what happened today. Something relaxing. Something comforting, with someone who comforts me. 

Listeners, remember the relationships you have in your life. Think about those relationships, and what contributes to them. Though you may feel like your existence is one that exists in multiplicity, remember that there sincere differences between you, and the other selves that you perceive. You are is made up of small, unique fractions that are specific to you. Someone that is just like you, in every perceivable way, has small differences when you look at them closely. The way you fit into the world, the way you fit into the lives of others, and the way that you exist is ultimately small, inconsequential, and incredibly unique. While there are a multitude of people like you, listeners, there is only one version of you. 

Stay tuned next for the sound of a man getting up and going to go spend a quiet evening with his husband, and then the sound of a very faint buzzing from somewhere on your left side that you cannot quite ascertain the source of.

And goodnight, Night Vale. 

Goodnight. 


End file.
